TELECOMS
Dawn of a new era
End-users are becoming increasingly tech-savvy, says Tony Strutt,
vice president of sales at Technicolor Connected Home Northern Europe.
A
t the start of the
millennia, it would
have been rare to
see more than three
or four connections
in the home but now, it is simply
commonplace. The emergence
of smart phones and tablets and
their rapid growth into mainstream
technology has been a significant
contribution and now, with the
dawn of the smart home era, the
number of connected devices will
no doubt grow consider ably more.
BI Intelligence’s Connected Home
Report, for example, found that
connected home device shipments
will increase at a much quicker
rate than smart phone and tablets,
with a compound annual growth
rate of 67 per cent over the next
five years forecast. As a result,
the demand for greater bandwidth
and faster connections is
proliferating in unison and it is the
role of service providers to find
new ways to cater for the needs
of their customers.
The answer to this demand
is ultrafast broadband, the new
generation of telecommunications
technology that delivers
speeds of 100Gbps or more. The
technology is already beginning
to gain traction in Nor thern
Europe, with the European Union
(EU) driving forward deployment
in its Broadband Policy and
Strategy, which states that
Europe needs widely available
26 | July 2017
and competitively priced fast
and ultrafast Internet access. As
such, the same policy commits
to providing all homes within EU
states with 100Mpbs broadband
by 2025.
This is certainly an ambitious
target, but is it a realistic one? As
a region made up of both crowded
cities and rural countryside, there
is not going to be a one approach
fits all solution – so how can the
EU deliver on this promise and
deliver the sorts of broadband
speeds tech-savvy end-users now
expect as standard?
The current market
Efforts to bring Europe’s broadband
up to speed have already started
across the region, with service
providers deploying various
technologies. These include fibre-
to-the-home (FTTH) and hybrid
solutions where fibre is combined
with other technologies. Data
Over Cable Service Interface
Specification (DOCSIS), for example,
is an evolving international standard
that provides Internet access via
a cable modem and allows the
addition of high-bandwidth data
transfer to an existing cable TV
system. This technology is already
well established and the standard
is continuing to grow since the
arrival of its upgraded DOCSIS
3.1 specification, which offers
fibre line speeds of up to 10Gbps
downstream and 1Gbps upstream.
This is a huge jump from its previous
standard and the past 18 months
has seen significant progress on
delivering ultrafast broadband
through the standard.
Meanwhile, G.fast, a digital
subscriber line (DSL) protocol
standard for local loops shor ter
than 500 meters, uses existing
copper lines to enable ultrafast
broadband speeds of up to
500Mbps, depending on the
length of copper wire. This is
growing in popularity amongst
ser vice providers and in the
United Kingdom, trials of this
technology have already begun.
It is also expected that the
standard will play a significant
role in the nor thern par t of
Europe, especially where FTTH is
not possible, to ensure countries
hit their targets for ultrafast
broadband rollout within the next
three to five years.
Another broadband offering
which can enable ultrafast
broadband in the home is Long-
term Evolution (LTE) technology.
Traditionally associated
with providing on-the-move
connectivity, LTE is rapidly
evolving as a technology for
providing broadband ser vices
in the home, complementing
the traditional fixed broadband
technologies such as fibre, cable
and digital subscriber line (DSL).
For bandwidth hungry end-users